Heirs of the Fallen: Book 04 - Wrath of the Fallen

by James A. West

As the cheers for Robis rose higher, Leitos stood still as a statue, dirty and battered, one bloody hand on the hilt of his bloody sword. For the first time since meeting him, Belina saw not the youth, but the unbending figure in her visions, the man of shadow and steel, the bringer of death. But whose death? She had never asked herself that. A shiver tingled her spine, and sour bile gurgled in her throat.

  A smile gradually spread across Leitos’s face, but it did not reach his eyes. It was no smile at all, Belina saw, but a grimace of disgust. The chatter continued for a while, arguments back and forth about the proper course, until more and more folk began to see his ghastly expression. One by one, they fell silent.

  “Join me and fight,” Leitos said woodenly, “or remain here, healing, fortifying Armala, and telling yourselves lies about a future you will never know. I care not which. Whatever your choice, I need it by dawn.”

  Damoc raised his hands as Leitos made to leap from the table. “Hold, boy! Surely there is no need for such haste? Besides, it’s not as if you can defeat Peropis and her hordes alone.”

  “Oh, but he can,” Robis hooted. “After all, he’s the slayer of the Faceless One, who is not the Faceless one at all, but Peropis who, it happens, is not actually slain!” Jeering laughter met this, far more than Belina would have expected from the people who had cheered Leitos when he first arrived.

  “I will await your answer,” Leitos said to Damoc, each word hard and cold as ice. “I depart at sunrise.”

  “Do you intend to swim back to Geldain?” Robis called, earning more derisive laughter.

  “If I must,” Leitos growled. He jumped from the table and stalked out of the hall. His response, despite the bitterness of it, only brought more heckling.

  Chapter 17

  Leitos had no intention of waiting for help from a pack of self-deluded idiots who believed they had won something more than a dead city sitting atop a useless rock in the sea. He had read the unwillingness in their eyes, heard it in their laughter, and knew their minds were made up. And so was his. He had made his choice, and there was no reason to delay.

  As soon as he entered his room, he began stuffing supplies into a haversack. It turned out he had much less than what he needed, and the haversack made a pathetic bundle. He would need to head down to the wrecked ships and see what he could find.

  “I thought we had until dawn?” Adham asked behind him.

  Leitos spun to find Ulmek and Damoc standing with his father. Behind them waited Belina, Sumahn, and Daris.

  “I will not be slaughtered with the rest of those witless sheep,” Leitos said. He bit back anymore he might say, but only because these people before him were not enemies deserving his wrath.

  “So you do mean to swim back to Geldain,” Damoc said, one finger tapping his pursed lips to hide his wry amusement.

  Leitos bit back an acid retort. “The Bloody Whore and the Night Blade still rest upon the reef. Both ships carried longboats. I can rig a sail. And if not that, I’ll row.”

  “Before you do,” Damoc said, growing serious, “why don’t you tell us how you intend to raise this mysterious army of yours? A solid strategy will go much further in convincing the others, than scorn and condemnation.”

  Leitos snorted in disgust. “From what I saw, they would rather lick Robis’s arse, than do what they must to survive.”

  “Enough!” Adham said, stepping forward. “You’ve been behaving like a blood-hungry Kelren ever since you stepped out of the Throat.”

  Bewildered by the accusation, Leitos’s gaze shifted from one to another. His father’s discomfiture was scrawled across every face. Did they really think he was behaving any differently than he ever had? More than the doubts, the ridiculous questions, the mocking laughter, it was their unease that put his back up. He was not a wild animal loose in their midst, just a warrior doing all he could to win against a deadly enemy.

  “I am hungry for the blood of our enemies,” he said. “Mahk’lar, Alon’mahk’lar, Na’mihn’teghul, and anyone who bends a knee to the Bane of Creation, no matter if they believe that being is the Faceless One or Peropis. I hunger to crush those enemies without mercy. If you do not have the same appetite, you should question where your loyalties lie.”

  “We all want the same thing,” Damoc allowed, but Leitos heard a hesitancy that he misliked. “All we ask, before agreeing to sail off to attack the whole of Geldain, is that you give us some idea of how you intend to succeed.”

  And so Leitos told them of the idea that had taken root soon after he first stepped foot into Zuladah, when Zera still walked at his side. His voice brimmed with more confidence than he felt. After Leitos finished, no one spoke for a long time.

  “It may work,” Ulmek said at last. “Of course, your plan needs a lot of luck, but I’m intrigued by the overall notion.”

  “Even if it doesn’t work,” Sumahn said, “I’ll march with you, little brother.”

  “As will I,” Daris piped, his constant grin nervous but willing.

  “We all will,” Damoc announced. “As you said, we have no choice, if we are to have a chance of survival. However, I will need to summon all the elders to a Great Council. They must hear what is at stake, and then decide the fate of their clans.”

  Leitos mulled that. “How long?”

  “A few days ... if that is acceptable to you?” Damoc’s wry amusement had moved from his lips to his voice.

  “Of course,” Leitos said, a small flare of hope sparking in his chest. “And if you need something more to convince the elders, be sure to tell them that Peropis means to escape the Thousand Hells, along with her kindred. Afterward, she will not just slaughter humankind, she will fill Geh’shinnom’atar with our souls. There will be no hope of Paradise, only everlasting agony.”

  Six pairs of eyes slowly widened as he spoke. Leitos chuckled darkly, sharing with them a bit of his own contemptuous mirth.

  Chapter 18

  Zera came before him, her expression neutral but beautiful as ever. In the sooty murk at her back, more people materialized, then faded, replaced by still others, like bits of spoiled meat bubbling to the surface of a vile stew. Some wore scarred Kelren faces, and others the golden miens of Fauthians. Leitos had killed them all, and they hated him. Let them hate, for they earned my wrath.

  Leitos reached through shadowed smoke with hands soaked in blood to the wrists. It gathered into large, trembling drops at his fingertips. When those drops fell away, he felt cleansed, unburdened. And why shouldn’t the blood of his enemies bring him peace?

  When Zera smiled, a gruel of clotted black fluid bubbled through her teeth. “A slayer pays for stolen lives, until the wind of the ages has scattered the dust of his life.”

  “They were enemies,” Leitos said.

  “Was I?”

  “No. I loved you. I still do.”

  “A slayer does not know love.”

  “You are wrong.”

  “All that you love will perish, slayer.”

  Leitos shook his head in denial. His bloody hands reached out. Before he could touch her, Zera crumbled and puffed away on unfelt currents. Behind her, the faces of all those he had cut down became Adham and Belina, Ulmek and Ba’Sel, Sumahn, Daris. Everyone he knew. Wilting, drying, they broke apart, became motes of swirling ash.

  “A slayer pays....”

  Leitos sat up, eyes darting, cold sweat pebbling his skin. He flung off his thin coverlet. The panted breaths filling his lungs seemed thin, insubstantial. He dropped his feet to the floor, and instantly recoiled from the clamminess of the tiles, so like the cooling flesh of a skinned animal.

  A dream, he told himself, struggling to calm himself. It was not the first time Zera had condemned him in a dream, but he knew that seeing her was just a sign of the guilt he carried in his heart for killing her. That deed, an accident born of fear, was the only blame he allowed himself to nurture. A slayer he may be, but not by choice. Peropis and her minions had forced him to become a killer.

 
But did she really? A sly voice asked, and showed him an image of the Fauthian who had begged mercy atop the watchtower several days before. Leitos saw himself poke a sword into the man, forcing him back until he toppled from the tower. He heard the man’s prolonged scream, then the thud of meat and bone impacting unyielding cobblestones. Did that man die because of Peropis?

  “Yes,” Leitos said, speaking vehemently to the silence around him. He thought he heard low, soft laughter.

  Leitos stood and padded softly to the window overlooking the palace grounds. The sun had not yet risen, but a ghostly gray half-light covered the world. In the semidarkness, Armala slumbered. “A city of Black Keeps,” his father had named it, a place of curses built by demons before the age of men, Zera had told him. He hated the sight of it, despised the dread it filled him with. He wanted to be away.

  “I will leave soon,” he promised the coming dawn.

  The Yatoan elders had begun arriving a few days before, men and women, each guarded by a contingent of warriors, and only set apart from those they ruled by the colorful sashes of rank each wore. All except Damoc. He seemed content to wear his forest-hued tunic and trousers.

  After the last elder had arrived, Damoc took them to the Throat of Balaam, proving its destruction, then guided them through Armala, showing them how it had been abandoned. The night before, he feasted them in the great hall of their fallen enemy, Adu’lin. Leitos had avoided the affair. Fine food and small talk was irrelevant. “Will you fight?” was the only question they needed to answer.

  And still I wait, he thought, impatient.

  Unable to sit still, he dressed in snug trousers, tunic, and his close-fitting robes. After belting on his sword and a dagger collected from one of the Brothers Adu’lin had turned into demon-possessed fiends, he draped a full quiver over his back and fetched his bow.

  Silence held within the barracks, and Leitos walked softly enough not to disturb it. Other than a few sleepy-eyed guards, most Yatoans were still abed. Let them sleep, he thought. Let them believe their victory is complete.

  Beyond the palace grounds, Armala lay quiet under the brightening sky. The sun was just beginning to cast its first rays over the mist-shrouded peaks to the west. In the east, those bars of light painted massing thunderheads crimson. The normal midday storm might be stronger than usual.

  For now it was a fine morning for hunting, though in the last few days his searches had yielded only another pair of Fauthians, and no Alon’mahk’lar. The few Yatoan patrols that had gone out had found even less. Yato, he reasoned, might actually be rid of foes.

  But in Geldain, there were plenty of Alon’mahk’lar, those like the slavemasters, huge creatures with horned heads and six-fingered hands. There were also Alon’mahk’lar of a different sort, those creations of rebel Mahk’lar who possessed every crawling creature to make unspeakable abominations. And, too, the Na’mihn’teghul, who were able to go about in human flesh until they chose to reveal their true nature, usually a freakish kind of wolf. Zera had been unique among that breed, able to become a winged being of flesh and spirit. He hoped to never meet such a creature again.

  After spending a long hour poking through dusty towers and manses, and studying grim monuments fashioned by demented minds, Leitos made his way back toward the palace. Before he reached the walls, he found Belina sitting on a bench. She didn’t seem to notice that the bench’s dark stone base was carved all over with screaming, inhuman faces. Neither did the dry fountain nearby appear to trouble her. It was a miscreation of ghastly proportions, graven feathers, wrinkled skin, and scores of twisted arms and legs. At least he thought they were limbs. They could have been serpents, or....

  The thought trailed off under Belina’s clear hazel gaze. Pushing a lock of dark hair behind her hear, she looked at him as if uncertain who or what she was seeing. Ever since he came out of the Throat, Belina and everyone else had started favoring him with a similar expressions. Let them think what they will.

  “I would have expected to find you with your people,” Leitos said, taking a seat at the far end of the bench.

  “They departed an hour ago.”

  “I suppose after a long journey and a night of feasting, they must’ve been—” Leitos cut off, belatedly registering what she had said. He put on an eager grin. “Departed so soon? So, they must have seen reason? Of course, after hearing about what I learned in the Throat of Balaam, why would they delay? Only a fool would dismiss the danger we face. How long before they return with warriors?”

  Belina stared at her hands. “They are not returning—with warriors or otherwise.”

  Leitos’s grin became brittle, slowly crumbled. His mind whirled, trying to understand. When the answer came, it wore a sneering face. “Robis,” he snarled, hand involuntarily dropping to the hilt of his sword. “I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” Belina interrupted, her worry palpable.

  Not worry, Leitos realized, but stark fear bordering on terror. It trembled her mouth, shone in her eyes.

  He tried to resurrect his broken grin, but it felt more like a hateful leer. “I’ll strip him bare and toss him into a pool brimming with fangfish,” he said, hoping the old jest between them would hide what he had intended to say. I’ll carve out his reeking bowels, had been the threat on his lips, a threat he had no trouble seeing himself make a reality.

  With some effort, Belina composed herself. “It was not Robis,” she said at last. “At least, not much. He is a fool, and just a few years removed from boyhood, besides. Anyone who doesn’t know that already, figures it out after listening to him prattle on for a few minutes.”

  “Then who?”

  “All of them, save for my father.”

  Leitos leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees. “I never would have believed your people could be so afraid.”

  “It was not fear that decided them.” Belina hesitated. “They did not believe what you said about Peropis wanting to bind our souls in Geh’shinnom’atar. Most of my clan doesn’t believe you, either, although they do accept that you destroyed the Throat. They name you a hero, but they do so with sadness, for they think the effort broke your mind.”

  Leitos gritted his teeth. “And you?”

  Refusing to look at him, Belina shifted on the bench. “I ... I don’t know.” Now she searched his face. “When you stood on that table in the gathering hall, I knew you were not lying, but I also knew you were hiding something. Tell me, Leitos, how did you really learn what you told us?”

  Your dead sister told me, the only woman I have ever loved, and the woman I killed. He couldn’t tell her that. It might even have been a mistake to reveal the truth to his father.

  Aloud, he said, “Everything I told was the truth. That is all that matters.” He stood up, settled his sword belt. “Perhaps it’s better this way. With so few of humankind to trouble her, maybe Peropis will spare those who are left. And, perhaps, if I travel alone, she will miss my coming.”

  “Alone? What are you talking about?”

  “Stay and cower with the rest, if you will,” Leitos said, failing to restrain his disappointment. “But I know what has to be done, if no one else does. And I will do it.”

  “What, conquer Geldain by yourself? Fight Peropis and her armies singlehandedly?” Belina spat, jumping off the bench. She had to stretch, but she managed to jam her nose against his. “Will you lay siege to Kula-Tak with just your sword and bow, Leitos? Maybe what everyone says is true. Maybe you are mad!”

  Leitos wrapped his anger in a cold fist and stepped backward. “My grandfather faced Peropis alone. It could be that is the fate of the Valara line, to stand where everyone else falls on their faces before their master. I will not bow or cower. I will fight. Alone, if need be.”

  Belina closed in and stabbed a finger against his chest. “You can tell yourself that you fight when no one else will, but you will not be leaving Yato alone!” She spun, kicked a loose cobble across the courtyard, then stalked away, muttering curses und
er her breath.

  ~ ~ ~

  True to Belina’s word, a pair of single-masted Yatoan longboats departed the largest isle of Yato the following morning, their long oars helping guide the boats past the shattered hulks of the Kelren slave ships the Bloody Whore and her sister the Night Blade. They made their way north into deep and treacherous waters. Damoc said it would take a fortnight, at the least, to reach Geldain. But that estimate would only hold true if all went well on Witch’s Mole, where they needed to gather supplies left behind by the Brothers of the Crimson Shield.

  Leitos and Adham, Sumahn and Daris, Ulmek and a rocking and muttering Ba’Sel all shared one longboat with a dozen of Damoc’s faithful warriors. In the other, Belina tended Nola, who had refused to be left behind. Their father sat in the bow, his eyes on the horizon, while another dozen warriors took turns manning the longboat’s four pairs of oars. A pitifully small army, but Leitos and everyone else had outwardly voiced the opinion that they were the hard core that would give rise to a far greater force. Inwardly, they battled fear and doubt. No army of any size had ever bested Peropis when she had worn the mask of the Faceless One, so how could they hope to do so now?

  To the few Yatoans who watched the departure along the shore, Robis solemnly declared, “We will never see any of them again.” A brash and foolhardy youth he might be, but no one refuted him.

  Chapter 19

  Lying under a concealing bush near the shore, Leitos listened as the breeze hooted and shrilled through the hollows that peppered Witch’s Mole, the largest and northernmost of the Singing Islands. It was a familiar and welcome sound after days of listening to the steady creak of oarlocks, the rustle of wind in the sails, and the lapping of the sea against the hulls of the longboats. Leitos supposed coming ashore was as close to a homecoming as he had ever known. Waves crashed in the distance, and spiraling seabirds cackled and squawked overhead.